More and more search engines are competing for our daily search queries and thus far it’s been a huge uphill battle against the mighty Google. I’ve already weighed in on how using incentives for search queries wouldn’t make Yahoo or Microsoft #1, but could a startup using Ask.com search results (disclaimer: I have IACI stock, which owns Ask.com) have result incentifying search queries? Over the weekend I’ve been checking out a startup located in the same city as Google HQ (Mountain View, CA) that wants to incentify us to use their search engine.

According to Google Trends I’ve been averaging around 20-25 search queries every day with a total of 5,200+ searches since Google started tracking.

From the graph above, it’s pretty easy to see when you’re not at the computer. At midnight, 1am I’m usually AFK and in July we typically take a family vacation. My heavy search query times are 7-10am, when I usually get the bulk of my online work done.

You can Winzy too
When I first saw Winzy (referral link) it reminded me of Blingo, another incentified search engine that to date hasn’t had a huge amount of success. The idea behind both is they want your daily search queries and offer random prizes for simply making a search engine queries through them. You aren’t required to download and run any software, although both have toolbars. Firefox users will appreciate there is a one click link to add Winzy and Blingo to their Firefox active search boxes.

Winzy also offers a number of widgets that you can embed on you blog/website to indicate how many friends and prizes you’ve accumulated. You can add a Winzy dynamic button to your site like the one below:

Kind of funny seeing Winzy swing at Google. It’s like throwing pebbles at a giant. Some webmasters are making a lot more than $100,000 every month by running Adsense and you don’t have to maybe win the bones in a monthly sweepstakes. If sites like Winzy ever take off, Google could counter with something like this: “Earn $100,000 at Google without making a single search.”

One of my friends, Darkmoon, who I cajoled into signing up under a mutual friend complained that he never wins anything online. I know what’s he’s talking about because I’m inherently unlucky at contests and random win things too but so far I’ve found Winzy to be fairly liberal in doling out prizes.

In fact since registering for Winzy last Thursday I’ve won something at least twice a day, every day. It’s been mostly points so far but one $5 Amazon gift certificate was in there (pictured at top of post).

Note: you can only claim two non-point prizes a month. Available prizes currently include iPods (iPod Nano and iPod mini), Amazon gift certificates and points. Lots of points. You are most likely to win points and with little effort from my experience thus far.

How Winzy works
Each day you can earn up to 100 points from searching and can play the points in the Winzy arcade. The points have no value and at the end of the month will be used as tickets in the monthly sweepstakes for a chance to win up to $100,000 USD.

You earn 1 point for each search or 2 points if you are a Gold Star Member. Gold Star membership is permanent and free and only requires adding Winzy to your search bar and then doing at least one search query.

The arcade games include a lucky 7’s slot, rock paper scissors and if you are part of the fan club you can play a roulette game. To become part of the fan club you must refer at least one friend. If/when you refer five friends you’re given a permanent fan club membership.

While searching you might run into games where you are a guaranteed winner like the Secret Suitcase that allows you open seven suitcases.

The last suitcase you open is the prize you actually win. I’ve seen and played this game a couple times since last Thursday, winning only points. Another game you can literally run into while doing searches is spinning the wheel of prizes:

I’ve spun the wheel a couple times and, yes, only won points. Expect to win a bunch of points at Winzy.

Friend invite imposition
Somedays it seems like every site wants you to invite your friends. One way to annoy and alienate friends is to invite them to everything you’re checking out, so I’m careful when sending invites and I always try and do it after some amount of personalized qualification.

I also try and make sure when I do invite a friend to something that:

1) it is something I’ve personally tried/used
2) it will benefit them somehow AND/OR
3) will be something that they are already doing AND/OR not take much of their time

Everybody online uses search engines and in this case it becomes a matter of using Winzy for some of the searches in place of Google or their favorite search engine.

Winzy support
Over the weekend I exchanged a few emails with support and was impressed with the speed of response and follow-up. I was also sent a second $5 Amazon gift cerficate for identifying possible problems with + in email addresses. Turns out there was a temporary Winzy database failure and Winzy handles ‘+’ in emails just fine.

Do incentified search sites have a chance to overtake Google?
Short answer is still no. They do have a chance to motivate Google, which I’ll get to in a bit.

I like playing games and think offering prizes for interaction at sites is a worthwhile concept. No, I don’t think any search engine including Winzy has a chance to compete against Google using incentives and games. I have been fairly surprised and a little impressed by the quality of the Ask.com search results that power Winzy. The bottom line with any search engine is how good the results are and the Winzy results aren’t as good as Google but they aren’t bad either. I’ve seen and reviewed a lot worse.

The other, perhaps more important side to this is keeping Google motivated on their search focus. If Google remains #1 they will get lazy someday. Hasn’t happened yet, but it will, just like Microsoft and other giants have in the past. I’m already giving Google enough mindshare, so spreading my daily search queries around to competitors seems like a small way to encourage Google to continue to refine and improve their search results.

Did this post make you go hmm?

Maybe Related Posts (plugin generated)

• Making the Google Trends volume cut: Gates, Winer, Scoble, Godin
• Blingo search
• Article on Google search query holes
• Checking out the new Google goodies: Trends, Coop and more
• Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can agree on something search-oriented
• Referral fees for Adsense and Firefox with Google Toolbar